Rhetoric: Language that is intended to influence people and that may not be honest or reasonable.

In reading the District Comprehensive Improvement Plan it is clear that those whose names are attached did not actually read the document they approved.

There are five more tenets addressed in the document:
2.1 – Provide school leaders with support.
3.1 – Provide school community with support; Utilize assessment and accountability systems to assess effectiveness, monitor school progress and determine patters of student learnings and share information with schools on a regular basis.
4.1 – Provide teachers with learning opportunities that help teachers identify best practices and strategies, support for teacher development in effective instructional planning, decision making and delivery, areas of student data use and goal setting to ensure high levels of student engagement and achievement.
5.1 – The district needs a policy and needs to work together collaboratively with the school to provide opportunities and resources that positively support students’ social and emotional health.
6.1 – The district need to focus on its policies to espouse a climate of belonging for families and communities and encourage school wide adoption of the district’s policies.

The actions for these tenets include:
Professional development for district and building leaders, school reviews, restructure Central Office, finalize Core Instructional Program (CIP), follow NYSED developed modules, professional development, activate data coaches, create a Comprehensive Professional Learning Plan, hire coordinating directors, deploy coaches to buildings to provide follow up support, assess student support teams, solidify framework, design data collection tool, identify matching services and resources within the district and community to support students based on specific social or emotional need, parent university, parent connect, parent & partners pilot program, SBPT meetings and parents survey.

Every educational dollar spent in the DCIP will be spent on educating adults.

Nothing in the DCIP provides for lowering class size or places more teachers and supports in the classroom. Not one tenet addresses providing a foundation in Arts education for our youngest students or entrepreneurial opportunities for secondary students.

Our children deserve a District Comprehension Improvement Plan that actually plans to improve their educational success.

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Of the fifty-four Priority and Focus schools in the Rochester City School District, (8) receive School Improvement Grants (SIG) “to provide adequate resources in order to raise substantially the achievement of students in their lowest-performing schools.”

The DCIP is designed to address the failure to properly educate students based on Major Recommendations by the NYSED.

The district’s solutions:

Tenet 1.1 – Based on a lack of bilingual teachers to fulfill NYSED regulations the district will:
Find bilingual teachers within the district and place them in their proper tenure area; Recruit more bilingual teachers.

Tenet 1.2 – To develop structures for assessing and deploying resources that respond to the needs of all school communities, the district will:
Allocate all resources around a specifically designed Master Schedule linked to the instructional diets of RCSD’s instructional core program;
Place two (2) instructional coaches in each Focus and Priority school (This means 108 adults that will not be teaching students);
Use $350,000 in educational grant dollars to deploy Gates study.

Tenet 1.3 – To concretely communicate an explicit theory of action about school culture that robustly communicates high expectations for addressing the needs of all constituents, the district will:
Send all district leaders on a week long conference (How many educational dollars will be spent for this?);
Outline expectations for elementary and secondary principals;
Provide information to all principals regarding needed goals.

Tenet 1.4 – To have a comprehensive plan for professional development that provide(s) support for staff for increased teacher and leader effectiveness the district will:
Create a Comprehensive Professional Learning Plan that supports school leaders and teachers in understanding the evaluation process, how and how to provide relevant feedback;
Hire Coordinating Directors in School Leadership, Initiatives and Outcomes, Coaching and Expanded Learning. (This means more educational dollars spent hiring adults that will not be teaching students.)

To address Tenet 1.5 – Using data to support student achievement:
Each Chief will hire a data coach.

Hiring more adults, providing week long conferences and professional development for leadership is not the answer to ending student failure, it is the reason for student failure.

Educational dollars must be spent on educating children.

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The requirements of the New York State Department of Education District Comprehensive Improvement Plan clearly state:

“Signatures confirm the respective parties certify that the SCEP (School Comprehensive Education Plan (DCIP)) addresses all of the required components of the ESEA Flexibility Waiver as detailed on page 1 of this document and understand that any significant modification of the school district’s approved plan require the prior approval of the commissioner.”

The District Comprehensive Improvement Plan (DCIP) which was submitted two days after the October 1, 2013 deadline was signed by Board President Malik Evans and Superintendent Bolgen Vargas on September 30, 2013.

“List of stakeholders who participated in developing the DCIP as required by Commissioner’s Regulations Section 100.18. Provide dates, locations, agendas and supporting documentation of Local Stakeholder meetings.”

The first “Name” given, Teachers/Administrators/Parents – (200 plus people). The “Title/Organization” of these 200 plus people, RCSD Stakeholder Groups.

The “Meeting Date(s)” for the District Leadership Team are from July 2, 2013 to August 12, 2013 and the locations are RCSD Conference Room, 2W-296-CO, and Board Conference Room.

Are we supposed to believe that “200 plus” people attended each of the six meetings listed at Central Office in the rooms specified?

Clearly district leaders are confused as to the composition of the required District Leadership Team as no “community organizations or institutes of higher education” are included.

The “Agenda attached” column lists “No” for all but the last meeting and the “Supporting documents” column lists “No” for all meeting dates.

The box titled “Signature – Needed” contains no signatures but gives the name of the Organizer: Susan Hasenauer-Curtis, Executive Director of School Innovation and Anita Murphy, Deputy Superintendent.

Since, per the DCIP instructions, both the meeting agendas and supporting documents are required, did either Susan Hasenaur-Curtis or Anita Murphy obtain “the prior approval of the commissioner” to omit this information?

These are the first three pages of a twenty-nine page document that was obviously not examined closely for adherence to procedure by either the Board President or the Superintendent.

The first page of this document should be the district’s overview which does not exist.

Our children deserve excellence from their leaders.

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Culture: A way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization. OR
The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.

Cultivation: The act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education.
Enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training.

Santosha Kuykendall posted this on the Flower City Parents Network site:
“I went to my daughter’s report-card conference yesterday and was concerned about two things:

I was shown a model of the new report cards . . . and [was] told that, “This is the sort of report card you will be seeing.”

It was full of Ds and Fs — because, I suppose, this is what we have to prepare parents to see when the report cards come out????? My daughter’s poor teacher finally had to put the model away because I wouldn’t focus on anything but the question of whether if, in the eastside suburbs (or the westside suburbs, for that matter) had decided to roll out a new report-card format, the administration would have created a sample report card full of Ds and Fs. Didn’t anyone wonder whether parents would interpret this as, “You should expect failure from your children”?”

The culture that exists in the Rochester City School District is one of failure. That is evidenced by the decades of failure it has experienced.

The expectation of failure is supported by the acceptance of failure from and by our district leaders.

The 2013-14 District Comprehension Improvement Plan is now posted on the RCSD website. It is incomplete, at times incomprehensible, and signed by Board President Malik Evans and Superintendent Bolgen Vargas.

However Deputy Superintendent Anita Murphy is now the contact name and individuals responsible for compiling and completing the document, the District Leadership Team, are listed. This list includes “Open: Drop in for all Schools” and members of the Excellence in Student Achievement Committee.

As with the 2012-13 DCIP, the 2013-14 DCIP lacks the required Overview of the district’s plan to improve student achievement.

We must cultivate a culture of success in our district.

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!

“No taxation without representation” a phrase coined in the 1700′s, marked the uprising of Americans against British rule because they were not represented in Parliament and therefore had no voice in the government.

As American citizens we are required to pay billions of dollars in federal, state and local taxes and with the collection of those taxes we have the right to vote for local, state, and federal representatives who are duty bound to enact legislation for the good of the people.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters writes:
“Since the court made its decision in the CFE (Contract for Excellence) case that NYC children were deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education in large part because of excessive class sizes, class sizes have instead INCREASED each year in every grade in the city’s schools.”

New York State Department of Education Commissioner John King has suspended his “Town Hall” meetings to explain the Common Core because he could not adequately address the concerns of parents saying that they, “were being controlled and dominated by “special interests.”

Is it possible that the “special interests” of parents are their children?

A better question might be, “What “special interests” are controlling Commissioner King?

Because we are being taxed so heavily, it is imperative that we use our Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, not along party lines, but for candidates who speak with the voice of the people.

For too long has the American citizen been lackadaisical about the importance of voting, leaving the future of our country in the hands of those who only care about their “futures”.

It is time that the “common” man exercise his responsibility to vote by engaging in and understanding the issues that stand before us.

Voting along party lines is what caused the “shut down” of our government.

Voting along party lines is directly responsible for the educational failure of our children.

It is our responsibility, as citizens, to know what candidates for public office are saying and to hold them accountable for what they say.

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!

Antique: A collectible object such as a piece of furniture or work of art that has a high value because of its considerable age.

Just about any thing you can think of becomes more valuable because it has aged “to perfection” except our system of education.

In the field of education, anything “new” that comes from education experts who generally have never taught in a classroom, becomes the latest program adopted by school districts and forced on professionals who actually teach children.

Each new program boasts the same misnomer, “Created by teachers for teachers” when the truth is the teachers who created these ineffective programs have never taught but simply hold teaching degrees.

Currently, the Common Core Standards is the newest regimented program that teachers are forced to inflict upon their students.

Our government has shut down and legislatures will not come to consensus about providing affordable health care to the citizens of these United States yet they will force States to adopt a “cut and paste” curriculum that will be forced upon districts who will force their teachers to force students to accept in order to receive federal funding for educating America’s children.

Providing a child centered, experiential, excellent education that concentrates on the gifts and talents of the child is not new. In fact, it is very “old school”.

In the past, education sought to discover the child’s passion in life and move them towards their profession of choice. At that time however only the children of the elite were educated.

Education was made public because very few could afford to educate their children.

Once becoming public the “old school” system was constantly replaced with a newer, cheaper, standardized system of education. Cost became the focus of education for the “common” man’s child while the elite maintained the level of educational excellence for their children.

In an America that promises equality there is a stark reality that mis-education perpetuates; the rich get richer and the poor, poorer.

Every child deserves to be educated in an “old school” elitist system of education.

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!

Leadership: The action of leading a group of people or an organization.

When you speak of leadership, most people assume that the direction of that leadership is towards success.

We have not seen success as the goal of our current educational leadership. In fact, the goal of the current leadership is unclear and their direction is confusing.

In 2007 the Rochester City School District, under the leadership of Dr. William Cala, was listed as “most improved” in ELA and Math with Newsweek ranking “Wilson Magnet High School 49th among the nation’s top 100 high schools based on advanced curriculum.”

The Board voted not to hire Dr. Cala as permanent superintendent and instead hired Jean Claude Brizard who, after having a vote of “no confidence” taken against him by district teachers, left the district for a position in Chicago.

Under the leadership of Brizard the district plummeted from “most improved” to the worst in the State.

The Board of Education then hired Dr. Bolgen Vargas as Interim Superintendent and after spending $40,000 to contract with a Superintendent Search Firm, voted to maintain Dr. Vargas as permanent superintendent even though he did not possess the New York State Department of Education qualifications for the position.

Under the leadership of Dr. Vargas, truancy has increased 1%, incidents of school violence have increased, and only ten of fifty-four schools are in “Good Standing” according to the NYSED 2013-14 District Accountability Status. Dag Hammerskjold School #6 listed in “Good Standing” was closed by district leadership.

Dr. Vargas increased Central Office administrative staff while reducing the number of counselors at the school level and has continued to implement the K-8 model after publicly stating that it would not be beneficial for the district to do so.

In the game of “Follow the Leader”, it is important to know where the leader intends on taking you. When you find that the ones you are following are not leading you out of failure the decision must be made to elect new leaders who not only know the path to success but are strong enough to follow it.

Join the Movement to Save Our Schools!

Thrive: To grow or develop successfully, to flourish or succeed.

Survive: To remain alive, to continue to live.

Failure: Inability to perform a normal function.

The failure of our current system of education has created a culture of survival in America. We have adopted an attitude of “every man for himself” in a world that is dependent upon unity of purpose and brotherhood in order to thrive.

We have allowed those who have nothing more than their own self interest in mind to gain control of our power as the government of this nation.

Money has become the god in which we trust and we are sacrificing our children to that god.

The Pledge of Allegiance has become a meaningless ritual that holds no importance in today’s society as it is mumbled by elected officials at the beginning of government meetings who forget to place their hands over their hearts, making no effort to respect the ideals of our nation.

I pledge allegiance
to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic
for which it stands
one Nation
Under God
Indivisible
with Liberty
and Justice
for all.

We quickly rush through those words in school, not requiring students to stand, or place their hands over their heart, or even say the words. We do not teach the importance of the meaning of the words or their intent.

Our government has been “shut down” for thirteen days. Not because legislators are doing what is best for the American people but because they are trying desperately to maintain the corporate power that is currently in control of America.

Providing our children with an excellent education that concentrates on the gifts and talents of the child while recognizing that we all have something to contribute to our world is the only chance we have to thrive and not merely survive in America.

United we stand, divided we fall.

It is time we come together, regardless of the odds against us.

WE the People can change the course of human events.

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!

Reason: A cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event.
The power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.

Excuse: Attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify.
A reason or explanation put forward to defend or justify a fault or offense.

There is no reasonable explanation as to why School Board members have accepted the failure of the Rochester City School District to provide its students with an excellent education.

They have attended countless retreats and utilized millions of educational dollars on consultants that are supposed to increase their managerial skills and help them make sound decisions.

We are told by School Board members that it is not their responsibility to manage the district yet they are willing to spend $360,000 in educational funds to contract with the McKenzie Group to learn how to do just that.

The Superintendent, in conjunction with the Rochester Teacher’s Association, have provided teachers with a vast number of professional development opportunities and administrators are constantly provided with in-services to guide them in managing their individual schools.

The RCSD Division of Teaching and Learning spends more than $30 million dollars in educational funds teaching teachers how to teach.

The result of all these expenditures, our children’s failure.

The problem is not the lack of education provided to adults, it is the unwillingness of our current system of education to place the focus of education on our children.

The research shows and educators know that a child-centered, developmentally appropriate, experiential education that promotes high expectations for achievement and that concentrates on developing the gifts and talents of all children results in the personal and academic success of the children engaged in this process.

Models of success exist within the district and are quickly being turned to failure by a system that is wrought with excuses. Poverty, racism, lack of funding, bad parenting, and poor teaching to name a few.

These are our children and they deserve an excellent education.

NO MORE EXCUSES!

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!

In 1978 the movie The Wiz gave us Lena Horne singing: “Believe in yourself the way that I believe in you.”

In 1988 Stand and Deliver’s Jaime Escalante told us: “Students will rise to the level of expectation.”

The truth is, all children, regardless of their parents socioeconomic status, skin color, or cultural background, will rise to the level of expectation of the adults who believe in them or fall in failure because of those who do not.

Our current system of education does not show our children that it believes in them. Just the opposite is true.

We do not challenge students to greatness. Instead we accept anything offered as being their best.

We do not believe they can achieve anything better than “middle class” so that is where we set the bar.

As adults, we show our children that “getting by” by “getting over” is preferable to the effort necessary to succeed.

Our children are falling to the depths of depravity because their adult role models, in and out of the home, have not shown them the virtue of standing righteous.

When adults make negative comments about the youth of today they are neglecting the fact that children do no raise themselves but are a product of their upbringing.

We hear adults say time and again, “It takes a village to raise a child” while allowing the leaders of the village to circumvent the laws and mores of the village.

“Don’t do what I do, do what I say” has never been an effect model for raising children since children will eventually emulate the actions of their role models, adopting their coping skills and strategies for success or failure.

If we want our children to succeed, adults must show them the way to success.

If we want our children to believe in themselves, we must believe in them.

It is up to us, as adults, to set the level of expectation for our children as high as is humanly possible and show them, not tell them, that they can achieve excellence.

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!